Peter DavidsonPeter brings over twelve years of marketing experience for both a professional services firm and a large non-profit organization. Peter has built successful permission email marketing systems, word of mouth marketing programs and has built communities of interest around a variety of topics using blogs. He currently writes for three blogs on marketing, branding, design and technology.

Blog Ecosystems

Luxury Hotels Using Technology to be Intuitive about Their Customers

Preferences it's all about knowing and adjusting to the preferences of their guests.

When regulars like Laurence Wiener check into the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York, they get more than a smile from the concierge and a mint on their pillow. Wiener's hotel room “knows” exactly how warm. It welcomes him with a personal message on his television. It even loads his most frequently dialed numbers onto the phone.

And the bellhop did not have to do a thing.

At the Mandarin and other high-end hotels, new computer systems which connect individual rooms to network servers can now keep track of guests' preferences and change the room conditions automatically.

These “smart” systems can learn whether a frequent guest likes the lights dimmed, the curtains closed or the room toasty warm. They can also personalize the electronics in the room so that the music of John Coltrane, for instance, greets jazz buffs when they enter their rooms. Meanwhile, sensors in refrigerators alert maids when the minibar is running low on Coca-Cola.

In the old days hotels relied on their staff to remember and make these adjustments to their customers experiences. People are a critical aspect of these smart hotels:

Smart networks rely largely on a user's preferences that hotels gather in various ways. Some guests, for example, fill out questionnaires before they arrive. At the Mandarin, housekeepers, bellboys and waiters took note of Wiener's preferences and updated the digital profile that the hotel keeps for each customer. Wiener, an anesthesiologist from Philadelphia, has stayed at the Mandarin 45 times the past two years when he was supervising the construction of his apartment in New York.

Trusted relationships are at the core here. Guests/customers need to trust a hotel to accept and benefit from these personalization systems. If you believe the motives of a hotel are to truly serve you better you are more willing to be open about personal preferences and information. If customers are concerned about the use of that information all the tech in the world will only scare off customers.

How is your business balancing the need to respond to customer preferences and assure them you can be trusted knowing their birthday and all that can be intuited from their purchase history.

Writing Memorable Newsletters: Spreadability

Spreadability is the ease with which your ideas spread from person to person. It's two basic modes are newsletter forwards and workplace conversations. For readers to deem your newsletter of high value it needs to provide ideas that readers can use. Ideas that readers can apply in their own workflows, share with others in their organization or share with their professional networks are ideas that will keep subscribers reading each and every issue that you publish. Once you have the content ideas and you are properly using Themes with Focus and good Summaries it's time to make sure that those ideas are spreadable.

Practical Tips:
Tell Stories: Tell stories of how readers have used, discussed and spread your ideas. Use a sidebar column to profile readers and what and how they are learning from your newsletter. Readers will see how others are benefitting from your newsletter and be inspired to do the same.
Encourage Forwarding: Always include a forward to a friend mechanism. Readers may not use it but it plants the idea in their head that it's OK and a good thing to forward your newsletter to colleagues. Users may forward your newsletter using the forward function on their email application. While this isn't trackable through your email newsletter application it is the spread of your content and newsletter branding.
Blog Them: Continue the discussion about your ideas and content on a corporate blog. Once you move your readers from your newsletter to your blog it's just one click to move them to your corporate site. A blog is a good place for more information about your email newsletter content. You can receive feedback via comments, conduct polls, and drive other behavior through a blog.

Writing Memorable Newsletters: Summaries

Summaries also called blurbs are important for newsletters for several reasons. Effective summaries serve readers well because they allow readers to skim the headline and summaries of several articles “above the scroll.” Analogous to above the fold for newspapers. Many email publishers simply past the whole text of each article into the body of the newsletter. They assume people will read from to to bottom. While easy, this approach is overwhelming to busy readers. Multi-tasking readers are much more likely to skim and cherry-pick the content they are most interested in. Your newsletter will serve readers better by supporting this behavior. View the top screen of your newsletter as a table of contents with headlines and brief summaries or teasers for your content elements.

When writing these summaries keep in mind that what you are writing should be the two or three talking points that a reader will use to begin a discussion of the ideas in your article. These talking points are what comes after “I just read an interesting article about...”

If you want your email newsletters to add value to your readers lives it's important to write them in a way that makes it easy for readers to discover content they are interested in and help readers remember and talk about the ideas they read in your content. Relevant ideas they can talk about with their colleagues and coworkers are what will keep readers subscribed, forwarding your newsletters and valuing your company as a source for valuable information and know how.

Customer Intuition Failure: ATM Machines

Why is it that the bank that sends me statements in English asks me everytime I use an ATM machine if I feel like giving it a go in Spanish? Guess what bank? I'm going to select English every time.

Wouldn't it be better if you could just select a prefered language and have it programmed on your ATM card so the machine never had to ask you again?

As more and more self serve kiosks and automated systems take over the customer interactions there needs to be a common sense approach to their interface design. Just as people need to be intuitive about their customers so to the machines.

Writing Memorable Newsletters: Focus

Once you have properly identified a theme for your newsletter issue it's important to stay focused on that theme. Many newsletters will contain one article on theme and then go on about filling the issue with a laundry list of scattered unrelated elements. Your readers are more likely to remember your newsletter as a valuable resource if all the elements of an issue support a particular theme. Everything from the subject line to the graphics, and pictures needs to play a supporting and reinforcing role.

Many publishers feel that each issue needs to “have something for everyone” and so they offer articles on a variety of subjects and themes. In doing this each topic is only addressed on a surface level and from one perspective. A focused newsletter issue provides multiple voices and perspectives and more in depth information. A focused newsletter can easily be labeled and filed for future reference or more importantly forwarded to friends and colleagues who your readers feel would benefit from the theme.

If you want your newsletter to demonstrate your companies thought leadership and industry expertise you should definitely do email newsletters with clear themes and focused content that supports and reinforces those themes.

Writing Memorable Newsletters: Themes

Remember, a theme for a newsletter is a one word or phrase that encapsulates or summarizes the subject of a given issue of your email newsletter. The theme helps in two ways. First, it helps you develop and filter content elements for the issue. Second, and more importantly, a theme helps your readers to grasp the value you are imparting to them. A well defined theme helps your readers remember your content and consequently your company.

Most publishing teams map out issue themes well in advance. Often times months in advance. This is a by product of the long lead times that traditional publications have. Magazines and print newsletters often require weeks and months for production, printing and mailing. But it's a new day. With electronic publishing it's possible to move much more quickly. In order to deliver the greatest value to your readers the more relevant and timely your theme the better.

How do you develop a theme? Ah, the key question. While many sales and marketing people would be quick to map out a schedule of themes based on the messages and stories that the company wants to broadcast this I think is a mistake. This turns your e-newsletter into an advertisement or worse spam. The best practice for developing email newsletter themes is to get elbow deep in the information and issues that are important to your readers. It's your customer intuition at work. The theme of your newsletters need to come from your knowledge of what your customers/readers want or need to know, not what you want them to know. How you weave your message and offering into that theme is your value as a producer/writer of your newsletter.

Practical Tips:
Talk to your customers - ask them what problems or issues keep them awake at night.
Monitor you customers - Use the Customer Intuition Tools that I blog about to monitor what's happening with your customers, their companies and their competition. Google Alerts and RSS feeds are your friends. Set up folders for each major customer in your newsreader.
Poll you readers - Consider using your permission marketing assets(email lists) to engage your readers in a poll or discussion about issues and topics that are relevant.
Talk to your Sales Department - Develop practices to discover what your sales people are hearing from their customers and prospects. Consider developing a group blog or wiki for capturing this information. Customer concerns questions and objections are a rich source of content ideas for your newsletter.
Monitor the Competition - Subscribe to as many of your competitors newsletters as you can so you can zig when the zag. You want to stand out and provide uniquely relevant and memorable content that will have your readers opening, remembering, using and forwarding your content every issue.

Writing Memorable Spreadable Email Newsletters

Go to a coworker who subscribes to(but isn't involved in producing)your email newsletter and ask them what the theme and two or three key ideas are from the latest issue. If they can tell you you're on the right track. Now, call a customer and ask them.

If your coworker can't recall and articulate the theme or key ideas of your newsletter how can you expect your customers and prospects to remember what you have to say. I'd argue that two ideas that are remembered are worth much more than five or six that well presented ideas that aren't remembered.

Spreadable ideas are what increases the value of your newsletter in subscribers minds. If your idea is what follows “You know, I just read about...” when a reader speaks up in a meeting or around the lunch table chances are your open rates and “forward to a friend” rates will be increasing. Information, ideas and stories that readers can share and apply to their own lives is the definition of relevant. Relevant is what keeps subscribers reading and talking about your newsletter and your company.

So how do you do it? How do you craft relevant newsletters? Here are some ideas to get us thinking:

Themes - Think of themes as the one word or phrase summary of your newsletter issue. This is the answer to the question “What was the last issue of the newsletter about?” For example: The October issue of the BeTuitive newsletter (subscribe here)is about “Storytelling”

Focus- Every element of the issue should reinforce the theme. Craft every article, summary, news item, graphic, link, subject line etc. to in some way relate to and support the central theme. Too many newsletters are not memorable because the theme isn't clear.

Summaries - We all know that people skim online content. Your summaries or blurbs need to capture your readers fleeting attention. More than that your summaries become talking points when readers talk about your ideas and content. They literally can be the two or three memorable sentences that follow the “You know, I just read an article about...”

Spreadability - There are technical and structural issues about constructing email newsletters that aid their spreadability. Most people are very familiar with how to forward email. It's still important to include a “forward to a friend” link because it plants the idea in readers minds and gets them thinking subconsciously who in their relational network could benefit from this content.

I'll look at these ideas in more detail in the days to come. In the mean time go as that coworker what they remember from the last newsletter.

Writing Memorable Spreadable Email Newsletters

Go to a coworker who subscribes to(but isn't involved in producing)your email newsletter and ask them what the theme and two or three key ideas are from the latest issue. If they can tell you you're on the right track. Now, call a customer and ask them.

If your coworker can't recall and articulate the theme or key ideas of your newsletter how can you expect your customers and prospects to remember what you have to say. I'd argue that two ideas that are remembered are worth much more than five or six that well presented ideas that aren't remembered.

Spreadable ideas are what increases the value of your newsletter in subscribers minds. If your idea is what follows “You know, I just read about...” when a reader speaks up in a meeting or around the lunch table chances are your open rates and “forward to a friend” rates will be increasing. Information, ideas and stories that readers can share and apply to their own lives is the definition of relevant. Relevant is what keeps subscribers reading and talking about your newsletter and your company.

So how do you do it? How do you craft relevant newsletters? Here are some ideas to get us thinking:

Themes - Think of themes as the one word or phrase summary of your newsletter issue. This is the answer to the question “What was the last issue of the newsletter about?” For example: The October issue of the BeTuitive newsletter (subscribe here)is about “Storytelling”

Focus- Every element of the issue should reinforce the theme. Craft every article, summary, news item, graphic, link, subject line etc. to in some way relate to and support the central theme. Too many newsletters are not memorable because the theme isn't clear.

Summaries - We all know that people skim online content. Your summaries or blurbs need to capture your readers fleeting attention. More than that your summaries become talking points when readers talk about your ideas and content. They literally can be the two or three memorable sentences that follow the “You know, I just read an article about...”

Spreadability - There are technical and structural issues about constructing email newsletters that aid their spreadability. Most people are very familiar with how to forward email. It's still important to include a “forward to a friend” link because it plants the idea in readers minds and gets them thinking subconsciously who in their relational network could benefit from this content.

I'll look at these ideas in more detail in the days to come. In the mean time go as that coworker what they remember from the last newsletter.